Holy smokes! This has been a busy day in Comcastland!
I had been wondering just what would follow the end of Comcast’s 5 year price lock promo this month. But I had figured they’d just tweak it in some fashion - maybe get rid of the price guarantees but keep the free gateways - not overhaul their entire program.
Just so I have my story straight, this is apparently everything Comcast announced/did today?
- Eliminated regionalized plans and implemented a new unified plan scheme across the entire country
- By extension of the above, eliminated “named” plans in favor of plans that are listed by their (intended) download speed
- Eliminated the cheapest postpaid plan, Connect. The new minimum plan, 300Mbps, is roughly the equivalent in speed and price of Connect More ($80)
- Eliminated Superfast (800Mbps) tier as well, leaving just 4 tiers/plans in total
- Backtracked a bit on mid-split upload improvements by dialing down the upload speeds on the new plans (especially for the equivalent of the old Gigabit tier, which went from 300Mbps to 100Mbps!)
- Eliminated data caps for all regions (for new plans)!
- Eliminated Gateway/modem rental fees (for new plans)
- Rolled Advanced Security service into base Gateway offering
- Eliminated xFi Complete package by virtue of the above three changes
- Hiked EDP (non-discounted) prices on most tiers (especially 2Gbps?)
- Effectively made the 5 year price lock a permanent (or at least, indefinite) offering
The elimination of data caps has been a long time coming, especially since the needle hasn’t moved much in almost 10 years(!) since Comcast went to the 1TB cap. And it’s even better that now you don’t get penalized for wanting unlimited data while using your own modem.
But the rollback in upload speeds is bonkers. Have we ever seen Comcast cut upload speeds like this before? I don’t imagine Comcast is ever going to come out and explain those. But I suspect that whoever proposed that Comcast overplayed their hand and was ending up with congested nodes was right on the money. It’s telling that Comcast isn’t offering upload speeds matching the fastest of the old plans (300Mbps) on any of the new plans.
In hindsight, switching plans during the previous price lock promotion was a good call. Even though I wasn’t able to talk Comcast down in price, the old 1100/300 Gigabit plan is now better than the current 1000/100 plan that replaces it.
Some of this certainly feels like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But the modem rental and data cap changes alone are some of the biggest changes Comcast has made in the last several years. What a day!
(Though with our luck, watch as Comcast adds a new feature in 6 months that only applies to the new plans)